Chris Christie, like John Kasich, has been spending a good deal of time running for President on his executive record and pooh-poohing the idea of another first term Senator becoming President. Those jabs are aimed largely at Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul. While the attacks have been broad on the “first term Senator” side (he says it without naming names), Christie has taken specific shots at Senator Rubio.

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” from Portsmouth, Christie said he’s got much stronger leadership skills being a governor in Newark as opposed to a senator in Washington.

“When you’re governor of New Jersey, you don’t like spending, you use the line-item veto and you line-item it out and you make the argument to people. You show up and get the job done,” he said. “This is an important position. You say you oppose spending but you do nothing about it. That should tell people something about what kind of effective leader someone might be. You have to figure out ways to do it. He should have shown up on the floor and made his case to his colleagues against that bill if he was so opposed to it. He didn’t, and that is a huge substantive difference between us.”

In explaining his absence from the Capitol last week, Rubio told CBS News that “in essence, not voting for it is a vote against it.”

Earlier in the interview, co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Christie, who was sitting in his campaign bus, if there had been “any sightings” of Rubio in New Hampshire, giving Christie the opportunity to tout his campaign’s presence in the state ahead of the Feb. 9 primary.

“No, no. We’ve been looking for Marco, but we can’t find him. We’ve had the bus all over New Hampshire. We haven’t been able to find him. We understand he did a very quick town hall here and then left to go back to Madison Avenue in New York,” Christie said.

Considering Christie has spent well over 50% of his time in 2015 out of state, he is hardly in a position to talk about showing up for work. In addition, since he has put all of his eggs essentially in the proverbial New Hampshire basket, he’s been there far more than any candidate still in the race with the exception of Kasich.